"The Elves don't do it."

"Really? There are no homosexual Elves? Who do I need to seduce around here to get some representation..."

She laughs delightedly. "If there are any, we have no stories of them. You could go to Imladris and try to seduce the lady Arwen but I expect that would end badly for you. I know no other living Elves by name."

"Are there Elves who live nearby? It occurs to me that there are many reasons to interview them. Actually, how big is this place? What's the physical size of the country, or the whole landmass it's on? How many people live here? Where is this... Town? City? I haven't seen enough to be sure what it is."

"Anadune. It's an island, in the shape of a star. The Valar raised it out of the ocean to give us a place to live. It's a few hundred miles tip to tip. We're in Rómenna, which is our biggest city, it has around a million people. The island as a whole has six million. There are no Elves here; the ones who aren't in Valinor live in the north, in ancient hidden kingdoms."

"Do you actually believe the Valar raised this place out of the sea, Ms. The Gods Are Frauds? Is this country in diplomatic contact with the Elves? What about other nations of Men? Where are the colonies, and how were they acquired?"

"No, of course not, but they certainly claim they did. We used to be on better terms with the Elves. They now come very rarely, maybe once a century, and in private, and often leave before we know they're here. The colonies are all east of here across the sea."

"Are the colonies several islands or one island or the west coast of a larger landmass?"

"Larger landmass. Middle-earth, the whole rest of the world. Why?"

"Curious about the logistics of this colonisation project. So, if it's on one part of a large continent, what do neighbouring nations think of it? Are they afraid of being conquered by Anadune and likely to support the colonies if they rebel? Do they have some sort of alliance or mutual cooperation with Anadune? Or is the entire rest of the continent unpopulated, or something?"

"We conquer as far as our reach can extend. The people beyond our borders sometimes war with us, but they are primitive and disorganized and don't form a force I can usefully defect to and turn against the crown, and it's not clear they'd release the slaves anyway. We are not honest with alliances; there's always a good reason to betray them and take more land and peoples."

"Can you arm them with guns and teach them how to use them? Guns are super convenient in that they allow you to build an effective army out of dumb meat-shields. I once went to a history camp where they had us do mock battles every day with progressively more modern fake weapons, from ancient times to the present day. Everything changes when you get point-and-click weapons."

"That sounds like an amazing camp. I could, except where would I get that many guns? Or any at all?"

"Oh, right, I should have guessed that you don't have the right to own guns. Back home, the answer would be 'down the street, at the armory'. Um, I don't suppose you know how to make guns? I remember the recipe for gunpowder, and I know a couple things about what makes some guns better than others, but I never learned how to build my own guns. It didn't seem very useful at the time. I wish I'd been carrying a textbook on war or something when I got here, instead of this novel." She said, gesturing to her now-abandoned historical drama.

"I don't know how to make guns. I also expect if I tried to acquire the ingredients of gunpowder, I'd be under a great deal more scrutiny."

"Gunpowder is just made from potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur. Are any of these, individually, controlled substances? If not, you could just get three of your friends to buy them individually, so that it doesn't look like any one person is trying to make bombs."

"...I don't think they are. I could come up with other reasons for retiring to a place in the country. Still leaves the guns themselves..."

"Do you know anyone who makes guns? Or know anyone who would have a plausible excuse for asking about gun manufacture? The impression I have is that crude guns aren't very hard to make; they just aren't very good."

"No, not yet." Her eyes are sparkling. "I can change that, though."

"Oh? Do you have people in mind? Or are you just really confident in your ability to befriend gunsmiths?"

"If it's important, I can do most things. Most people can, they just don't really care and don't really try."

"Um, I am a bit sceptical of the most people part, but I'm glad you can do that. What are your plans and priorities at this point, seeing as you probably don't care about incriminating yourself to me anymore?"

"Find a girl in the country with a big house and a big garden so I can work and have deliveries uninterrupted, find someone with a printing press, write a romance novel, bind it cheaply with paper, print hundreds of copies, get gunpowder delivered and befriend a gunsmith and learn how to make guns, explore the option of promoting piracy on the high seas. Anything I missed?"

"Transport me to the colonies and back, so I can see if this is something I want to be personally involved in? I mean, it's OK if you don't need me involved, but I'm not doing much by way of gun-building and subversive-literature-writing otherwise."

"You can earn yourself money for passage," she says, "I don't have it and anyway the profits from the passage aid the purveyors of the products of slave labor in defraying the costs of their travels."